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Sunday, January 25, 2009

The Newest Yarn

It's Sunday, so there must be spinning to show! This time, it's the All Spun Up spinalong fiber, a 70% superwash merino/30% alpaca blend. As a reminder, this is what the fiber looked like:

I knew I wanted this to be sock yarn, so with the idea of spinning an amount for each sock, I split the fiber in half lenthwise, spun the singles for each half, and Navajo plied. In execution, it didn't work out so well; one skein is significantly larger than the other, to the tune of about 70 yards.

Altogether, I have about 366 yards, which should be enough for a decently sized pair of socks, but I'll clearly have to use some yardage from the larger skein for the second sock.

The photos are a little dark, but they're pretty accurate. This yarn bloomed beautifully in its bath and the chain plying maintained all the beautiful shades in the fiber -- deep, plummy purple; royal blue; mossy green; burnt orange; and just a hint of gold. I love it.

Now I've moved on to some fiber from the Loopy Ewe that seems to be spinning up faster than just about anything I've spun before, some Spirit Trail Fiberworks superwash merino. I'm doing a two-ply fingering weight this time around, and I've already spun up half of it.

4 comments:

Mind if I share my new favorite divide-a-large-skein trick? It could possibly help you avoid this problem in the future ... take the great big skein of yarn, divide in half by weight, but don't cut it. At the midpoint, tie a slipknot, put a 1-2" snip of waste yarn in the slipknot, pull taut and re-wind into one big cake. Might be totally worthless in your world, but your uneven skeins problem made me think of it. Nice yarn!